Luke has a close call with deadly Seattle bar shooting

A shooting at a Central Area bar Sunday night that left one man dead and two others injured has KIRO Radio’s Luke Burbank feeling especially grateful to be alive after realizing he came close to being there at the time.

Police say an angry man charged into the Twilight Exit at 26th and Cherry to accost his girlfriend and bouncers kicked him out. He returned shortly after around 10 p.m. and shot the woman and a bouncer. Patrons dove under tables or fled for their lives. The police shot the man to death outside after he took a shot at cops and wouldn’t drop his gun.

A few hours later, a text message about the shooting woke Luke and his girlfriend.

“Why is this important to us? Because we were talking about going to that bar last night,” Luke says.

Luke and his girlfriend regularly frequent the popular bar just blocks from his house for food and Karaoke. It’s usually trouble free. The only reason they decided not to go was they got caught up watching a few episodes of a favorite TV show instead.

“Who knows if we would have been in any kind of cross fire, probably not, probably would have just been an upsetting thing for us because he apparently had one target in mind.”

Still, it’s got him thinking of how close we all potentially come to tragedy on a regular basis.

“Our lives are always coming closer than we probably realize to some terrible stuff happening,” Luke says. “I think we forget that this life is incredibly precious and incredibly fragile and we’re very lucky to be here.”

The close call reminds Luke of the shooting death of Justin Ferrari – the 42-year-old Seattle man killed by random gunfire as he drove through a Central Area intersection May 24, just blocks from the Twilight Exit.

Luke drives that intersection everyday, and can’t help but think about Ferrari. But he insists although it crosses his mind, he refuses to live in fear of “what might happen.”

“You can’t obviously go through life worried that a stray bullet is going to find you, because the chances are very slim of that happening.”

Still, he says incidents like these do remind him how grateful he is for all he’s got.

“We are lucky to be alive, all of us.”

And as for worry about returning to the bar? He has none. “I’d go there right now. Anyone want to cover the show for me?”